Ditch drives, hunched over the steering wheel. He has his eyes closed. He sees the route: houses, parks, highways, strip malls, schools.

He smells of fresh ink on newsprint, a sour dry pressing.

The route is a picture. The bluish haze of sky against eyelids. He keeps his eyes closed, has to keep his eyes closed. How do we know we are where we are? Thinking about things until everything is image, nothing is real. The van sways, tires squeal, Ditch holds on, his fingers against the hard plastic of the steering wheel.

He opens his eyes.

The bright blue sky pours a waterfall.

He's on the Expressway, heading towards the Western suburbs. It's his favourite part of the route, just before Mississauga. He can see the river winding down to Lake Ontario, the leaves shimmering red and yellow and brown. His face is turned to the side window as he accelerates, the van balanced for a half second on two wheels then dropping down to four.

"It's nothing," Ditch says. The urge to keep his eyes closed. Distance like a lurid memory. "I'm just tired."

Ditch talks to himself when he drives. It's normal. He's lonely. Six hours, eight hours, the time passes like scenery. It's nothing. Just a few words here and there. A sentence. Never in public. He tries not to in public.

He pulls up to the strip mall: quiki mart, dollar store, save-a-centre groceries, pharma-plus, donut emporium with a sign in the window: bathroom customer only. Ditch opens his door and jumps down. He stumbles almost falling. The still movement of the van turning revolutions. His legs are rubbery. No, not his legs but the muscles of his legs; they're asleep, Ditch thinks, but it's more like an itch, a permeating rash spreading down the inside slopes of his bony thighs.

He goes in.

"Hi there," Carla says, smiling. Ditch nods to the Good Time Donuts and Deli team. Carla and Bill. Carla hands him a coffee.

All day, Ditch thinks. Every day.

"The usual?" Carla smiles. They wear matching t-shirts, Carla and Bill. Carla's seems a bit tighter than Bill's. Carla is older than Ditch, but younger than his mother. Ditch raises his chin to look at her face fringed in a shoulder length frost of blonde hair. Suddenly, violently, he lowers his gaze. Behind him, the regulars smoke, plumes of feathered gray spreading out over the tops of newspapers.

"The usual," Carla decides, raising her voice as if Bill is a dog who only responds to a certain pitch.

"Right," Bill says. "With pickles, right?"

"Yes Bill," Carla says patiently. Ditch feels the itch in his legs. When the usual comes - a Western sandwich garnished with lettuce, tomato and pickle - he chews it mechanically, the taste of shrimp and noodles coated in rich brown sauce lingering in some dark crevice under his tongue.

"I didn't order this," he says.

Slumped in the driver's seat again, the landscape blurring by, Ditch wishes he could do something with his legs. He pulls the window down, breathes deep. The van reels out on to the 427, swerving suddenly in another direction.

"Shit," he mutters. Brake-lights and bumpers. "Must be an accident." He fiddles with the radio, inches the van along, traffic stopped all the way past the airport - like always, he thinks, pressing the soles of his boots against the beveled bottom of the van. Above him, planes lurch into the clear sky. Ditch thinks about the donut girl. Carla. She's old. He follows the streaks of dispersing exhaust through the atmosphere. She's old. She's probably thirty. She works in the donut store. With Bill.

Ditch nudges the van forward. Fills the space left open to him. Sometimes they try to cut in. They come in from the lane that's ending and they try to cut in.

Ditch rolls the window all the way down, leans into the scoured taste, the layer of exhaust on his tongue a hot milk skin.

The highway skims the tops of factories, warehouses, industrial complexes, super-store outlets. All the buildings, gray monoliths subsumed by the perfect expanse of sky. Ditch keeps his face out, breathing, trying not to think about breathing.

"Chinese," he says to the gritty wind. "Chinese with Mom."

Finally, he merges with the 401. Traffic picks up. Twenty minutes later, he's in Scarborough, working his way over to University of Toronto's suburban campus. He'll drop off a load of newspapers and pick up last week's load, a similar stack. Untouched, unread. The wide streets, the tree-lined avenues, huge houses with thick white doors. It's Friday. He feels his long legs compressed. Tonight, he thinks. He's invited to a party. The waitress at the bar he sometimes goes to. Suzie. He thinks she might be beautiful. The place is a dive. He goes there because nobody ever goes there. She works there for the same reason. She invited him.

He waits at a light. A skinny woman wrapped in a bathrobe wanders aimlessly to the foot of her driveway then turns abruptly and half-runs back to her open front door. It must be nice, Ditch thinks. When the light changes he makes a left. "Here it comes," he says to himself. "The private school." He pumps the brake as if feeling for something. The van is barely moving. I won't look, Ditch thinks. But it's bright out and it's lunch-time and all the girls are in front, smoking cigarettes and staring defiantly at the slowing traffic. Ditch turns his head as the van drifts by. The girls purse their lips to pull in smoke, legs jut out of their plaid skirts like toothpicks. He isn't looking.

****

Ditch walks to the kitchen, naked feet trailing little puddles. She's working late tonight - functions - that's what she calls them. He imagines her smile, bright and polite, hands pressing into hands, a certain smug dryness, a certain arrangement of seating. Her voice delivered like the weather.

He stops in front of the refrigerator. The towel hangs like a shawl around his shoulders. He takes out the orange juice carton and unscrews the cap. He stands by the fridge with the bright plastic cap loose in his palm. He tilts the carton, fills his mouth with juice. He forgets to swallow until he feels the cold trickle down his chin. Then he gulps the juice down, gasps for air. He puts the carton back in the refrigerator. He wipes his face with his arm. The orange cap still in his hand. He slams the refrigerator door shut. His mother's note flaps under its magnet mooring:

"Ditch, honey. Please go up and see Mr. Knudtsen. I promised to visit him tonight, but I forgot I had a function. Make sure that he is okay and ask him if he needs anything. Have you given any more thought to your future? Sandwich stuff in the fridge. I will be home late. Love, Mom."

Knudtsen rents the upstairs apartment. He's lived up there since Ditch was a little boy, that is, since before he could remember much of anything. Knudtsen joins them for birthdays and holidays. He used to be a tailor. Barbara calls him family. For Ditch the idea is exotic; the notion that he has a family. He keeps having this dream: hundreds of people are stuck waist deep in the newspaper recycling dump. They don't struggle. They stand with their backs to Ditch and his van full of papers, waiting for him to unload over them. Family.

He opens the refrigerator. Peers in, seeking something in the cold shadowed corners; a feeling he has. Hunger or something else. Knudtsen up there. Getting older. Ditch has a party to go to.

In Ditch's hand the note crumples against the plastic orange juice cap. He throws them both in the garbage under the sink.

Their house, jammed in between two others built to last in the nineteen-thirties, doesn't let much light in on the main floor. Ditch blinks, always unprepared for Knudtsen's suddenly bright upstairs apartment. The setting sun pours through the large window of the living room, a yolk yellow sticking to everything.

"How you keeping my boy?" Knudtsen asks. His voice like gravel.

"Oh fine," Ditch says, standing in the middle of the room, still squinting, smelling the old man smell. He looks at his watch. "Mom sent me, she can't make it, she's working tonight. So I'm here to, uh, you know, say hello."

Knudtsen laughs like a throat clearing. "Sit down my boy. Sit anywhere."

Ditch perches himself on the edge of the red couch. Dust jumps up in spumes, catches in the glowing embers of dusk. The sun just above thick gray clouds. With spots still in his eyes, Ditch stares at Knudtsen, sitting in the armchair, a blanket over his knees. He looks away and then looks again, following the crevice cheeks, grooves forking and meeting like country roads. He feels a warmth in his chest; the lingering conscience of bodies - so alive and possible.

"You sitting or standing?" Knudtsen asks. He shields his eyes from the sun. It doesn't matter. He can't see that far. He's going blind.

"I'm sitting," Ditch says. He says it again: "I'm sitting." The couch is a rock under him.

"Never mind," says Knudtsen, suddenly, waving a dismissing limb. "A young man like you, so much to do, so much to do. I had better to do once, I know about it. You're working?"

"Yes."

"Helping your mother?"

"Yes."

"A good woman."

"She wanted me to tell you she'll see you on the weekend."

"On the weekend..." Knudtsen screws up his forehead. A maze. A puzzle.

"It's Friday. Friday night."

"Yes."

"I'm going to a party," Ditch announces. He cringes, feels his face go hot. Why tell the old man that? Knudtsen is guilt and dreams and the solace of nostalgia. Family?

"You've got a girl?" Knudtsen asks, crooked grin.

Ditch looks at his hands, the grooves of his fingers, the cuts where the sharp plastic bundling cords slide under his skin. Knudtsen leans into the down-turned folds of his face. Ditch strokes the fabric of the couch, watches the faded red turn dark as it ruffles. He keeps his knees together, resists the urge to leap to his feet, pace around the room, stare out at the street Knudtsen can no longer see.

"You need anything?"

Knudtsen shakes his head.

"You got a girl? Tell an old man something." Knudtsen's lips still moving, the after-shock of remembered speech. "Tell me...what's it like...what's it like with the girls?"

Ditch turns, stealing a quick look at the street. How much time has passed? It's suddenly gloomy in the apartment, the sun falling under the clouds, disappearing; outside, he can see the trees dropping leaves, spiraling shadows making halos in the light of the street lamp. And it looks cold, he thinks. Almost winter. He presses his feet to the floor, toes flat, muscles stretching. A date tonight. He's nervous, isn't sure how it happened, how things happen. Why should he be nervous? Is it late? It's getting late.

Knudtsen makes that noise again, laughing, throat clearing, strangling.

"What's it like?"

"Well," Ditch says. "It's like, it's, you know, it's...the same."

"The same?"

"Well, you know..." Ditch says. A terrible itch in his legs.

"I haven't been out in weeks. Weeks. They cut my ride program. Bastards."

"They cut your program?"

"They used to come pick me up. I'd go to the Golden Age to play cards or see the concert, they always do a concert in the Fall. I used to go, you know."

Dust creeps into Ditch's nose. "I'll take you, you tell me when it is and I'll take you over. We can use the van from work. I can get it anytime. I have it tonight. It doesn't matter. No one cares. I can take you."

"Not tonight." Knudtsen waves a dismantled limb. "Don't even worry about me. Worry about the girls." He laughs, coughs into a slack fist.

"No, really," Ditch says getting up. "I will. You just tell me when it is, or tell Mom, I've got to go now. But you let me know anytime."

"Take care of your mother," Knudtsen says, his eyes turning bright. "She's a beauty." Knudtsen coughs, a fine mist spraying into his lap. "A lovely."

Ditch goes back to the refrigerator. He holds a jar of olives in his hand. Shriveled green orbs, red pimento pushing through, a withered pregnancy. The old man loves her, he thinks. He puts the jar back.

Outside, a horn sounds hard edges through shadows. The deep urgency of an engine turning against itself. Ditch, face in the fridge. The horn, louder, continuous, repeating. A car alarm. What can I eat? Eggs, butter, a can of tuna, she keeps her tuna in the fridge, all the crazy family he has, nothing here, nothing to eat. He'll leave a note: Mom. No sandwich stuff. Gone out. Gone to a party. Be back late. Won't be back.

Someone bangs on the door.

Ditch moves through the hallway, the light from the refrigerator spilling out behind him.

"Yes?"

The man is in a suit. He looks normal. Now it's really night, Ditch thinks, peering into the evening haze. Why is he so surprised? It's night and he's late.

"Is that your van?"

Ditch steps out on to the walk. The man moves around to the front of the van, stops at the hood.

"It's blocking the sidewalk," the man says. His lips shift when he talks. He's normal. Everything might just be normal. Ditch's t-shirt, for instance. Short sleeves. Pale arms in the pale street lamp light. But it's too cold. Way too cold.

"What?"

"Didn't you hear me?"

"I -"

The man slaps the hood.

"It's blocking the sidewalk."

Ditch watches the stranger's hand disappear, white on white, imperfect shadows. Leaves rustle in the gutter. It's fall. It's winter. It's too late, or too early, she's waiting. I hope she's waiting.

"I was just -"

"I had to walk around."

Another ringing slap and the man spins away.

Ditch shrugs, swings into the soft sinking seat, settles back, feet working the pedals. The engine rumbles. The sound is familiar, an old man's snore. Bathurst Street breaks into view. Suddenly exhausted, he has to fight against the urge to let his eyes close.

****

He pulls up to her house. He waits at the curb, not sure what to do. Honk the horn? Ring the bell? He should go in and get her. What's he thinking? Mom would be - horrified -

But before he has a chance, a whole crowd spills out. Suzie waves to him. A guy wearing a Maple Leafs baseball cap taps on the window. Ditch lowers it.

"Beer?" the guy says. He holds up a bottle.

"That's Bobby," Suzie says, swinging into the passenger seat.

Ditch grabs the bottle waving in front of his face.

"Thanks," he says.

He drinks, feels empty.

"My father was a drinker," he says to Suzie.

"Everyone get in," she yells, prying open the sliding side door.

He rolls the van around a curve. The shapes become people, screaming and slamming against the walls. A girlish giggle. Someone saying: "Fuck off up there..." Suzie has a bottle between her thighs. There's something on the radio. Ditch watches Suzie sing along, her face caught in the street lights. She looks happy. It's not a date. It still might be a date. She's sitting next to me. She squeezes his arm.

"So how are you? I love parties."

Ditch drinks, spills beer down his shirt.

The party is in a warehouse transformed into a studio. Giant gashes - bleeding organ oils - hang off the brick walls. Ditch moves into their frames and stops. He doesn't get out much. He holds tight to the bottle of beer in his hand.

Strobes flicker high overhead like collapsing stars. Ditch can't see Suzie. The party is its own country, a crammed shape shifting and flexing. He stands at the border of that encompassing land, some invisible fence between him and undiscovered territory. He keeps pouring beer in oblong splashes down into the part of himself he thinks he might be able to fill. He's alone, staring at an orange swath of kidney sprayed over with a thin mist of lime green.

"Do you like them?"

Ditch turns. She's hazy in the swirling strobe of lights. He can't quite make her out. He squints through the gloom, falls into it, her hurt gray eyes, all he can see. Thinks of Knudtsen, the way the world must look to him now. Why think about -- she's a -- He takes a deep breath. He could be in love, if he wanted to. He looks quickly back at the kidney canvass.

"They're like getting stitches," he yells.

He hears her laugh, a peal of bells so different from the repetitive pulse of the music.

He shifts his beer into his other hand and rubs his wet palm on the leg of his jeans.

"I'm...Ditch," he says. His paw waving. She giggles again, just touches the palm of his hand with her fingers. Cold and impossibly small.

"Debs," she says.

He thinks she might be shivering.

"You're cold?"

"It's snowing," she says. "I can't believe it."

The way she says it, like she really can't believe it.

"It's snowing?" Ditch says.

The canned beat of dance music.

"What?"

Ditch shrugs. Forget it. Her breath against the hot side of his face.

She steps back, looking at him as if from a distance. Ditch reaches into a trash can filled with ice and pulls out a bottle. He twists off the cap, points the beer at her. She drinks. She's wearing an oversized old gray knit sweater. He can't see her body. Her throat lilts as she swallows.

"C'mon," he says. He holds on to her, finds the door, pulls them outside. She stands beside him, resting against the white wall of the van.

"This is fucking amazing," she says. "Snow."

Ditch tilts himself off the side.

Snow, I didn't even -

He holds his hand out, watches the tiny flakes disappear. He is anywhere the white flakes flutter out of the bottom of a coal night, the snow driven to land by the pushing lake wind. His head pounds to the beat of the music, he feels the ache in his legs, wants to run away, wants to wrap around her, disappear into her.

She's shivering again.

"Should I," he says, "I mean..."

She leans into him.

"I hope it snows forever," she says. "You know? It's so...and I'm...Where I come from...Listen to me. I don't even know what I'm talking about..." She throws her bottle down the road. It skitters on a carpet of white, doesn't break. "You can kiss me, you know."

First snow always sticks, Ditch thinks.

Then Suzie is there, her warm bare arm around his shoulder like the press of a mother, hugging bones.

"Hey! I've been looking for you!"

Ditch nods. A thickness coming up his throat. Suzie next to him, beer tasting like regret - the grateful discovery of some unrequited kindness.

"Lame party," Suzie says. "So snobby. I guess it's some kind of art thing. All those gross pictures. I didn't know it was gonna be like this. But hey, the free beer's alright."

Ditch nods again. He wants to tell her. What can he say -

He stares down the road, imagines the distance.

I should go, he thinks. It's late. Mom'll be worried.

But he stays where he is, slumped against the beached side of the white van. Departure is a feeling. A fear in his legs, an aching. Long years repeating. Familiar seasons: the next year, the year after that.

He'll see her again. Has to.

It seems like he's always driving. The give and swing of the wet rubber treads spinning. The van keels, he feels it slipping sideways. He puts his hands against the thin sheet of the van's curved wall. He is the one drifting.

"Alright," Suzie yells as they slide into the skid. Her voice a dead echo. Ditch feels it too, the deflated optimism of an accident on purpose; adrenaline, futility, tires not quite gripping the road.

The people in the back of the van are limpid shapes, the beer bottles in their hands gleaming as streetlight brushes through the front window. Ditch sees Suzie in the rear-view mirror. Suzie and Bobby, their faces lit up. The dark flashing spaces between streetlights, people, possibilities. Someone hooting. Ditch waits for those moments, fleeting clarity, he sees Bobby's hand on her sweater, he sees their lips moving, then Suzie's head disappears. Bobby's face in a peripatetic loll. His legs are out from under him. Someone laughing. When the light steeps in, Ditch can see her lips spread open.

Then Suzie starts screaming:

"You fuck. He puked. You asshole. You fucking fucker. You puked on my head."

Someone goes: "Stop the van. Stop the van."

Ditch has him by the ankles. Suzie has his arms. They throw the back door open. Suzie yells: "One, two, three." Ditch swings three times, lets go.

Ditch on the passenger side, his face rolling against the window. The van moving forward in soft gentle rhythms.

"Hey. Wake up."

Suzie claps her hands together.

"You're home."

I don't want to -

"Hey you awake? Ditch? Are you okay? I'm sorry if - I never meant, you know? That asshole. I'm just going to park the van in front of your house here. You'll have to move it in the morning. I mean, you'll get a ticket. Here. Take the keys."

She kisses him quickly, on the cheek. He wants to say something, but can't seem to get the words out. I'm not drunk, he thinks.

She walks away, quickly.

Ditch stands still on the sidewalk. Arms wrapping the mist of snow around him.